The Velvet Years of Mel Torme

The trouble with Mel Torme is that he has too many activities, and performs them all too efficiently. There are those he does to perfection (singing, composing), and those he does inordinately well--drumming, arranging, writing (newspaper and magazine articles, books). Everyone, you might say, should have such troubles.

Back home in Los Angeles after a recent tour, Torme, who turns 63 Tuesday, was afraid to be interviewed because he had no complaints. “This is going to be dull, because in the past I’ve had something provocative to bitch about, but what can I say today? This is the happiest time in my entire life; everything is so good, I’m waiting for the bubble to burst.”

The inflated bubble was due to two nights playing to capacity houses and standing ovations at the Hollywood Bowl with his frequent partner, George Shearing; to the success of his latest Concord album and the completion of recording for the next, a reunion with his old arranger friend Marty Paich; to a major new pop album by Steve Miller in which Torme’s “Born to Be Blue” is the title tune; to an upcoming Jason Robards’ movie, “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” in which he sings the title song; and most notably to the imminent publication by Viking of his autobiography, “It Wasn’t All Velvet,” due out next month.

As an advance copy revealed, the memoir has all the writing skill he displayed in his previous books, “The Other Side of the Rainbow,” about his experiences writing for Judy Garland’s TV series in the 1960s, and “Wynner,” a novel.

It is more successful than either, since its personal revelations shed a fascinating and generally honest light on his private and public lives: the years as a child singer and radio actor in Chicago, the pioneering MelTones vocal group of the 1940s, the three wives who jettisoned him (he doesn’t pretend to be blameless for the first two breakups), the five children, and the fourth wife, Ali, a tax lawyer, who now has him, he says, permanently contented.

As his friend Charlton Heston has observed, “Mel Torme explores his subject with a clear eye; he writes with candor and humor. I was taken enormously with this book.” To which the subject adds: “When you write a book about yourself you have to be reasonably even-handed.”

Among the topics about which he has always voiced strong views is the recording industry. “As you know, I’ve never predicated my career on the success of any one record. Sure, there have been some songs I’m associated with, like ‘Mountain Greenery’ and ‘Lulu’s Back in Town,’ but I’d be a liar if I said those were platinum sellers. Even ‘Blue Moon,’ which was high on the charts, didn’t hit No. 1.”

He has never forgiven the brothers Nesuhi and Ahmet Ertegun, whose Atlantic Records signed him in the 1960s. “These brothers were supposedly such great jazz fans, and I was ecstatic about signing with them. Then Nesuhi came to my house and played me some of the most putrid songs I’ve ever heard. He sat there jiggling in his seat, snapping his fingers, really believing in this drivel. Atlantic just wasn’t the place for me; the Erteguns basically are businessmen with a totally commercial approach.”

Such experiences make him doubly happy with his present situation. Concord Jazz is an independent company that records whatever its artists want to record, which usually corresponds with what is desired by the owner, Carl Jefferson.

“Jeff is a big bear of a man and just as honest as the day is long. He has good taste, and good distribution--wherever I go, there’s always a Concord record of mine in the bin. To make it even better, all my old things that I did with Artie Shaw and the MelTones have been reissued by Musicraft; so have the old Bethlehem albums, and the Verves, even some of the Atlantics.”

Finding non-standard songs that are worth recording has become a challenge. “I’m not talking about the melodies,” he says, “but so many of today’s lyrics are being written by young songwriters and are designed to come out of very young mouths. If I sing some of the words that are out on the market today, I have no credibility.”

When he does find the right song, Torme often sets himself the even more grueling task of orchestrating it; he is the only major pop singer whose musicianship enables him to write many of his own arrangements.

“What really thrilled me, the other night at the Bowl, was to have so many of those L.A. Philharmonic musicians come over and say gee, we loved your arrangements. That means so much more to me than if they said hey, you sang beautifully, because, you know, that’s easy.”

Easy?

“Well, when I write an arrangement I have to sit at the piano and form the chords and make up my mind about what harmony or which substitution to use, and then slowly, very carefully, write it all down. For me, it’s terribly time consuming. For a genius like Billy May it’s nothing--he can write an arrangement on a plane, in his sleep, under water. For me it’s agony, but when I hear the results, it’s heaven.”

As deeply absorbed as he has been in music during at least 50 of his 63 years, Torme has intense outside interests. His knowledge of old movies is encyclopedic. He has been an airplane pilot and is thinking of taking up this hobby again. He likes to sit around chatting with people like Artie Shaw, who shares his background as a voracious reader with a consuming interest in extramusical matters.

“I have a pal,” says Torme, “who runs a Sony service office near here--a real nifty guy. Sometimes, even if I don’t have anything that needs fixing, I’ll just drop over there and we’ll rap about anything--not about music. You know, I’ll get in a limo from the airport, and the driver will say, ‘Hey, Mr. Torme, you want a different station?’ And I’ll say, ‘Please, just turn it off.’ You can really get inundated with music, and there are times when you just have to hold it at arm’s length.”

Will Torme’s book wind up as a major motion picture? Somehow the recipe seems wrong: he has never touched any drug, not even a cigarette, drinks only an occasional glass of wine, and has never had a comeback spread in People Magazine. On the other hand, his encounters with Ava Gardner, Marilyn Monroe and various other Hollywood luminaries may seem spicy enough for conversion to screenplay--which Torme himself might be best qualified to write.

He has a healthy ego and a tendency to name-drop, but it would be hard to find anyone for whom these qualities were more fully justified. Among his closest friends was another former child prodigy who also sang (a little) and played drums (a great deal), Buddy Rich. He is, in fact, the subject of the name Torme literary enterprise.

“I talked to Buddy just before he died and he said, ‘You’re the one to tell it, and make sure you tell the whole story--warts and all.’ I’ve written three chapters and I’ve done tons of research, but don’t crowd me--publication is a year away; meanwhile I have my own autobiography to promote. One thing at a time.”

Sure. Just singing, writing songs, finishing up arrangements, playing drums, recording for movies and albums, studying his new Macintosh computer, promoting his book--that is Melvin Howard Torme’s idea of one thing at a time.